If you plan to vote for Donald Trump, it is your right to vote for the candidate of your choice. Just be aware the candidate of your choice doesn’t want the rest of us to have a choice in the future.
You will be voting for a candidate who, for the first time in American history, wants to jail his political opponents. Not for any crimes they have committed but simply because they oppose him.
If you are OK with a wannabe dictator, go ahead. But do not be surprised when your political messiah turns on you. Donald Trump has a long history of betraying people who thought they were close to him or who thought he was a good businessman or who thought he cared about them or their causes. Just ask Mike Pence or the hundreds of folks who worked in his first White House who have said the man is not fit for office and is a threat to democracy.
Mark Wingfield
These are not woke liberals like me issuing these warnings. They are dyed-in-the-wool conservatives like you. They are conservatives who value truth and honesty and the common good.
I realize you may not want to listen to those voices because they are saying something you don’t want to hear. Yet I implore you to stop and look at the evidence. It is overwhelming.
More than that, you will cast a vote for the greatest liar American politics has ever seen. Nobody in history has spewed as many bald-faced lies as rapidly and continuously as Trump. Are you really OK with that in our nation’s top elected leader? If so, you are saying truth doesn’t matter. That’s on you.
A vote for Trump is an endorsement of voracious and dangerous lying.
Perhaps you’re one of those people like Robert Jeffress who says you realize he’s a bad dude but you’re not voting for a Sunday school teacher; you’re voting for someone who shares your political agenda and will enact the policies you like.
“A vote for Trump is an endorsement of voracious and dangerous lying.”
If your idea of good policy is mocking the disabled, imprisoning your political opponents, deporting all illegal immigrants and wrecking the U.S. economy for spite, persecuting gay and lesbian and transgender people, devaluing your wife and daughters, and demonizing Black and brown people, then Trump is definitely your guy.
But here’s the deal: You don’t have to vote for him.
I’m not trying to make you a Democrat. I’m not trying to make you abandon your conservative principles. I’m just asking you not to vote for the most dangerous politician in modern American history. Don’t give him your vote.
In an ideal world, the Republican Party would have put forward a better candidate, but they did not. They chose a deranged old man who you wouldn’t trust with your 401(K) or your daughter.
You don’t have to vote for him. Nor do you have to vote for Kamala Harris. You have the right to write in another candidate. You also have the right to vote in every other race on the ballot and leave the presidential race blank.
“Imagine the message it would send if Republican voters refused to vote for the Republican presidential candidate.”
Imagine the message it would send if Republican voters refused to vote for the Republican presidential candidate. Maybe the Republican Party could return to sanity.
And please don’t tell us you’re voting for Trump as the lesser of two evils. There is no one on the ballot more evil than Donald Trump, who makes a mockery of the Christian faith and plays evangelical Christians for chumps. You don’t have to like Kamala Harris, but comparing her — or almost any other candidate — to the level of Trump’s evil is disingenuous. And it’s a lie.
If your vote is all about abortion, Trump also isn’t your best candidate. During his last term in the White House, the number of abortions in America went up, not down. And his hardline stance with the Supreme Court created the greatest backlash against the “pro-life” movement we’ve ever seen.
Everything about Donald Trump is an illusion, carefully crafted to make you think he’s something he’s not. His entire persona is a big lie.
Vote for him if you want to, but don’t be hypocritical and say you value truth. To quote the Bible, “the truth is not in him.”
Mark Wingfield serves as executive director and publisher of Baptist News Global. He is the author of Honestly: Telling the Truth About the Bible and Ourselves and Why Churches Need to Talk About Sexuality. His brand-new book is Troubling the Truth and Other Tales from the News.
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